Artist Profile Story by Amy NewmAN
Douglas Francois Girard
For Palmer artist Douglas François Girard, painting is like a conversation. Whether it’s a feeling, the way the sunlight hits the mountains, or how the color of a bird’s feathers plays off the surrounding landscape, Douglas paints to share how he sees the world and invites viewers to explore it with him.
“Looking at the landscape, there’s a feeling that overcomes me, and I want to communicate that to the viewer,” he says. “Maybe you’ll want to walk through that landscape, or it gives you a spiritual feeling. My goal is to make a beautiful object that’s kind of a poetic harmony of color and composition that’ll suck you in and make you want to explore.”
That desire springs from Douglas’ belief that the modern world has disconnected many people from the beauty of our surroundings and the almost spiritual experience that accompanies being part of the natural world.
“People are moving too fast, and I think they need to slow down and see what their place is in the world,” he explains. “I think people have lost a sense of mystery about
the world; I think bringing that back would be a good thing.”
Douglas has always been drawn to the world’s mysteries. His father was a physicist, and for years Douglas’ dream was to follow in those scientific footsteps and become an astronomer. That changed at age 13 when an art class he took with his mother inspired him to enroll in a specialized arts high school.
“It was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he says. “It was small, only 16 to 18 students, and you spent half the day doing art, learning about drawing, graphic design and art history.”
He enrolled in the Chapman College Art Center in California after high school and planned to go into commercial advertising as an airbrush artist. But after
taking some fine art courses, he once again found his focus shifting.
“I kind of got excited about painting landscapes and figures for the joy of painting,” he says. “There’s an intellectual side of (painting) where it becomes a game of design and balance and composition. That was more fascinating than painting a jar of pineapples for some company.”
Looking back, he laughs at his 20-year-old self for thinking that a career as a fine arts painter over one in commercial advertising was a smart financial decision.
“I was just exuberantly young and thought I could do it,” he says. “And I couldn’t. It was a struggle.”
He taught at a small art school and painted in his off hours; when he moved to Alaska, he worked at a local design company and as a freelance illustrator. In his spare time, he taught himself to paint in a more classical style.
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